As I usually do during the assessment interview, I asked this couple a few questions about their beginning — how they got to know each other, what they did for fun then, what times they remember as being especially awesome.

This couple had a lot of good answers here. Among other things, they spoke of weekly dates, pinging each other with texts throughout the day, taking long hikes in the woods near their home on the weekends, and surprising each other with frequent "just because" gifts.

No crises were brewing, but both partners expressed frustration regarding a recent (and, now, repeated) experience of emotional distance, and noted some built-up (built up as in "ready to explode") tensions around some more or less perpetual areas of conflict (yes, there is such a thing, but it’s not a deal-breaker; more about that in other post).

This trip came just in time, it turns out. The truth was that this couple had been really missing each other during a summer of unusual busyness — missing as in having trouble connecting in an emotional, intellectual or (euphemism alert) "intimate" way.

So the hard truth (yeah, I know, I’m forever hawking hard truths) is that relationships take work, work that we — like Dorothy Gale and Luke Skywalker on their respective quests — have always had, will always have, the power to accomplish in our day-to-day-life together.

We don’t need a vacation from the rest of life to make this happen. We just need to create the intention to put this important task on our already-stuffed-to-the-gills to-do lists. And then we need to just DO the thing. Over and over and over again.

But what is easier is not usually what is most rewarding, right? (With the exception of Kraft Mac-and Cheese. Or a Starbucks Vente Mocha Latte. Or watching an episode of So You Think You Can Dance. Damnit. Well, you know what I mean.)

Another finding from Pillemer’s study: "Couples who have made it all the way later into life have found it to be a peak experience, a sublime experience to be together ... Everybody — 100% — said at one point that the long marriage was the best thing in their lives."

All of this is worth the work, people. But it is work, indeed.

Happily, it is work you won’t regret because you can be confident that it will lead to the flourishing of the relationship that you knew was right to begin with.

Anne Barker is a writer and psychotherapist in Omaha, NE, specializing in working with couples and individuals on all manner of relationship issues. Visit Anne’s relationship blog at Hitch Fix or her website to find out more about her writing and services.